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Monday, 30 September 2013

"I like the scarf, but really?": Steven Moffat Interview

So, Steven Moffat gave an interview to Nerd³, which for his and our purposes is a Youtube channel run by a chap named Daniel Hartcastle. There's a rumour in the Youtube comments that Moffat agreed to do it because his son's a huge fan of this channel, and while we couldn't find any solid evidence to this effect we didn't see any to the contrary either. Actually, saying that Daniel Hardcastle has a Youtube is probably understating it if you like Internet video game fan culture, so we'll just provide links to this interview, TV Tropes, the fan Wiki, and his personal Twitter for those who desire more background on the interviewer. There is quite a lot of info and we'll confine ourselves to noting that Matt Smith was apparently his favourite Doctor.

The interview itself is a whole half-hour of discussion, and even so it had to be cut down from twice that length, what with cutting out spoilers and all. That is, some of it is showrunner discussion, some of it is comfortably casual chit-chat (Moffat looks very relaxed and cheery in this interview) and some of it is joking about what naughty things Jeff was watching in "The Eleventh Hour", but there's a wealth of interesting comments for anyone willing to sit through the whole thing. The one that all the papers have picked out to reprint is the anecdote with Peter Capaldi's name attached. Russell T Davies was delighted to have an actor of Capaldi's caliber on the programme (as per The Writer's Tale, "Brilliant casting!"), so after Capaldi appeared on Torchwood as well, he came up with a theory to reconcile the two appearances. He mentioned this in passing to Moffat, who called back after the Twelfth Doctor was cast to inquire whether the theory was still valid. The answer was yes, and we're going to see a story dealing with this somewhere along the line.

Someone who Moffat identifies as a "very good Doctor Who writer" offered to write a story about the Weeping Angels, with a pitch that Moffat thought was wonderful. Unfortunately, the writer in question called back two days later saying that he didn't have the time after all, so it won't be happening in the next series, though it's a possibility for the one after that...Neil Gaiman is an obvious candidate (who's very good and so busy he wouldn't have time for DW?), but it could just as easily be someone else. For all we know he might have been talking about Chris Chibnall, who has a lot to do for the next series of Broadchurch.

Plus random snippets - the TARDIS is just a machine and it isn't crusading for justice when it takes the Doctor strange places, it just wants to go somewhere interesting. Because it's a "party animal", Moffat says, and he reckons that Idris' characterisation backs that up. Sonic screwdrivers exist to be plot inhibitors/facilitators, hence the business with deadlock seals. There's another confirmation that the whole reboot-the-universe business in "The Pandorica Opens" was intended specifically to give him leeway to fiddle with continuity and paper over cracks. Indeed it's one of three, the other two being the Time War and the Silence. Someone is going to cast a woman as the Doctor one day, and it might be him. He can't find the statue that inspired his idea about the Weeping Angels, but was surprised one day to be sent a picture from a Belgian fan of an angel wearing a gas mask (he didn't say if it was from the Musée des Beaux-Arts). The day that the press stops caring about the impending death of the programme is the day he'll start worrying its days are numbered. And the headline quote was apparently what the younger Moffat thought of Tom Baker wearing his scarf indoors.

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